The Push Man & Other Stories The Push Man and Other Stories

Legendary cartoonist Yoshihiro Tatsumi is the grandfather of alternative manga for the adult reader. Predating the advent of the literary graphic novel movement in the US by thirty years, Tatsumi created a library of literary comics that draws parallels with modern prose fiction and today's alternative comics.

Designed and edited by one of today's most popular cartoonists, Adrian Tomine, The Push Man and Other Stories is the debut volume in a groundbreaking new series that collects Tatsumi's short stories about Japanese urban life. Tatsumi's stories are simultaneously haunting, disturbing, and darkly humorous, commenting on the interplay between an overwhelming, bustling, crowded, modern society and the troubled emotional and sexual life of the individual.

A lone man travels the country, projecting pornographic films for private individuals while attempting to maintain a normal home life. A medical student lives a secret life as a sperm donor, and finds his world turned upside down when his donations are rejected by the fertility clinic. A young couple's marriage is irrevocably affected when a sewer rat takes up residence in their home. The lives of two men become intertwined when one hires the other to observe his sexual escapades through a telescope. An auto mechanic's obsession with a female TV personality turns fatal after a chance meeting between the two.

"What a revelation this book is. I'd no idea that long before writers like Haruki Murakami and Kenzo Kitakata, the work of Yoshihiro Tatsumi had so expertly peeled away the laquered layers of Japanese social and sexual surfaces to reveal the elemental heart beneath, and with such fearless depth of feeling. Decades ahead of its time and long overdue for US publication."
--Chip Kidd

"From the moment I read Tatsumi , he shot to the top of my short list of favorite cartoonists for adults. His direct story telling style is bracing and raises the bar pretty high for those of us trying to entertain intelligent grown ups."
--Gilbert Hernandez

"Tatsumi's comics are clean and straightforward without pretentious tricks. Storytelling at its best." --Jaime Hernandez